“Dunno nothing. The Mutineer seems to be winning. All the battles are his victories.”
“Then tell me about your father.”
“Which father?”
“Don’t play games with me, boy, or I’ll curse the balls off you.”
“I don’t know!” Chies howled. “Stralg? I’ve never met him, not that I remember. He doesn’t…” He was going to say “doesn’t love me” but that would sound ridiculous. How could anyone love him now? He was in league with Xaran, helping one of Her Chosen. Murdering people.
Sesto caught up with them and shouted instructions on how to turn the team. When the llamoids had been slowed to a walk, Chies told him they must find a hot pool. With Sesto leading this time, they reached a place where he said they could bathe. She told Chies to tell him to lift her down from the car.
“Undress me!” she ordered Chies, waving her mutilated hands, and of course he did. She was a horrible sight, the color of old bone, tufts of white hair, every rib showing, dried out dugs like empty meal sacks. “Help me into the water. You get in, too. And tell him to follow.” Sesto had blood all over his hands and arms.
So the three of them sat in the steaming water as the stars came out. Chies had little chance to brood on all the dead men, because she kept mumbling questions and he had to answer, or find out from Sesto for her-the war, the assault on Veritano, yesterday’s unexpected visitors. She listened eagerly to that part. She made Chies tell her all the things the Celebres had talked about with the Mutineer, so far as he had heard. It was a long agony. She was in no hurry, yet the warbeasts might be on their trail already.
“Now, how will you get your dear old aunt to Celebre?”
Chies translated. “We have to take her to Celebre. How can we do that?”
Sesto’s face kept twitching strangely and he spoke funny. “We’ll have to take to the river, or the others will track us.”
“There are boats?”
“Small boats. It’s a small river until we get near the city.”
Chies hugged himself in misery. “Won’t they just run along both banks until they find us?”
“Warbeasts can’t run forever, boy. Boats can.”
Chies told the hag about the river, and boats.
She cackled with satisfaction. “You will arrange whatever we need. He will obey your orders if you say they come from me. If you need anything from someone else, tell me and I will Control them just like I’m Controlling him.”
“And me,” he muttered.
She patted his shoulder with a ruined claw of a hand. “No, Nephew. I’m not Controlling you. I’m forcing him, I admit. He knows I’m doing it and he can’t help responding. But you’re helping your poor old auntie because you want to, aren’t you?”
“Yes, Aunt.” He thought he was just too frightened to argue.
“You want to punish the people who did these terrible things to me, don’t you? You want to help your father defeat the Mutineer, don’t you? You want to be doge, don’t you?”
Had he heard right? “Is that possible, Aunt?”
“Bah! If I can send a flank of Heroes to Xaran, you think a ragtag herd of elders will stop me making you doge?”
Chies said, “No, Aunt!” Holy Twelve! That made a difference.
“You get me near this Marno Cavotti and there won’t be any rebellion.”
“Yes, Aunt. I mean ‘No,’ Aunt.” Hello, Papa. Aunt Saltaja and I have tamed the Mutineer for you. I have his head in this bag. And the elders elected me doge…
“We children of Hrag stick together and help one another!”
“Of course I will do whatever you say, Aunt!”
“How will you get us into the city itself?”
Chies turned back to Sesto, whose twitch seemed to be growing even worse. Giving orders to a rebel flankleader was a heady sensation. “How do we get into Celebre?”
“I can’t go in. The ice devils watch all the gates. They’ll kill me.”
“I can. How about her?”
Sesto blinked, chewed his lip, flicked eyebrows as if his face had gone crazy. “They’ll question a Vigaelian woman. Don’t see them around often.”
Chies turned it into Vigaelian for her.
She was undoubtedly madder than a burning cat, but she was not stupid. “The Celebre boy is a Werist too. And had another Werist with him, you said. How will they get in?”
Translation…
Sesto whimpered, as if in pain. “The Mutineer was going to take the Celebres to Flankleader Eligio. He runs a ranch north of Cypress Gate. He has friends. He gets people in and out.”
“You know this place?” Chies asked.
“Never been there, but it will be easy to find. Just south of Montegola.”
The news made the Chosen cackle again. “Then we will go there and speak with Flankleader Eligio. We’d best be on our way. Chies, you will dress me. Now you see why I told you to collect the men’s robes before Sesto got blood all over them?”
As Chies was helping her out of the pool, he said, “If you want to meet up with Stralg, Aunt, I don’t think we should go to Celebre. He won’t be there.”
She turned and smiled at him. Her mouth was a foul-smelling pit of bloody gums and a few blackened teeth. “Good, good! Starting to be helpful. Your father can wait, boy. What matters first is your sister.”
“Um, Fabia?” He kept forgetting he had a sister.
“Yes, that one. Frena, she used to call herself. But I don’t care what she calls herself. I do care, very much, how she dies. Understand?”
“Er, yes, Aunt.”
“Very horribly, very slowly. Because of what she’s done to me.”
“Of course, Aunt.” Chies finished drying her scrawny carcass with one chlamys and reached for another to drape her. “And her brothers, too?” He didn’t want a contested election.
Not far off dawn, they stole a boat. Two dogs started to bark, then had second thoughts and ran away into the darkness, whining in terror. Their owners were either asleep or had enough sense not to interfere. The hag made Sesto release the exhausted llamoids and push the two chariots off the scruffy little jetty into the river. They floated away upside down, wheels plaintively turning. How soon until the Veritano warbeasts arrived?
Chies gave Sesto his orders, then collapsed in the bottom of the boat and went to sleep.
Before noon they left the river and commandeered a wagon.
That night, Chies found himself eating a hearty meal in a farmer’s hut. Several hearty meals, in fact, one after the other. The farmer was a heavyset man, almost big enough to be a Werist, but he was Controlled as tightly as Sesto, wearing the same mindless expression, answering questions in the same singsong. He had a fat wife, a hulking adolescent son, and a remarkably pretty daughter. They were all Controlled, too. Sesto was a walking corpse, barely able to speak, but he had probably not slept since leaving Veritano. Chies repeatedly had to order him to keep eating.
Aunt Saltaja was starting to look better already. Her mouth bled less and she was steadier on her feet. Yet her mind seemed even more twisted than before. She rarely spoke of anything except the atrocities she was going to inflict on Fabia Celebre. Also the brothers, but mostly the woman. Fabia was another Chosen, apparently. Chies was sorry to hear that, because he had quite liked her. She had kissed him and gotten his accursed chains taken off.
He finished eating at last, picking a few last treats out of his teeth. He yawned. A comfortable rug and a blanket were in order now. The lamp was flickering, its oil almost gone, and the fire had shrunk to embers. The hut was built of bamboo, wicker and palm-leaf thatch, so all the rooms were tiny, but there were several of them. He assumed Aunt Saltaja would take the best sleeping platform, and hoped he could steal a place by the fire. Or just steal away? He had very good night-sight. If the stars were out, he might manage to escape.
“You want her?” his Aunt said suddenly, leering her black stumps at him.
“What?”
